Legacy Family Tree Webinar: “Finding Your Roots in Catholic Records”

Legacy Family Tree Webinar on Catholic Records

Researching Hispanic ancestors involves a significant amount of time working with Catholic church records. Having a solid understanding of those records is essential to doing good genealogy. This means more than just being able to read the record, and pick out various facts. What sort of laws, regulations, or customs dictate how and why records were created, and by whom? Have these laws, regulations, or customs changed over time?

Many genealogists grew up in and are currently practicing members of the Catholic Church. Those of you might already have sufficient understanding of the aforementioned questions, and are already very familiar with the types of life events captured in Catholic Church records. But a lot of genealogists are like me; we have Catholic ancestors but did not grow up in the Church, so we need a primer on what those life events are, and about the corresponding records.

About the Webinar

Lisa Toth Salinas explains the basics of Canon Law in the Roman Catholic Church, and how it has historically impacted the records that genealogists consult. She describes the role of sacraments in the Church and the records associated with those life events, and highlights which are most important to us in terms of genealogical information. Lisa also provides suggestions on where to find those records and how to access them in the United States.

A helpful handout is included.

I highly recommend this webinar to anyone with Catholic ancestors.

Regarding Mexican Parish Records

Many of the statements made about the coverage, extent, and accessibility of Catholic parish records are not as relevant to Mexican records. This webinar focuses on Catholic records in general. Parish sacrament records in Mexico have been well preserved, are pretty much extent back to the early 1600s, and most are available online through FamilySearch (coverage for other Hispanic countries varies by country). However, the background information about the records is still very relevant to our Mexican and Hispanic ancestors, and Lisa’s tips for locating and obtaining those records is very relevant to researching our Mexican and Hispanic ancestors after they settled in what is now the United States.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars

Legacy Family Tree Webinars produces a regular series of quality educational webinars on a variety of genealogy topics, for all levels of experience. Individual webinars can be purchased, however, a subscription membership provides access to new live webinars as well as their robust library of previously recorded webinars.

I factor an annual membership in to my genealogy education plan and budget.

  • Monthly by Month Membership: $9.95/month
  • Annual Membership: $49.95/year
  • Single purchase (digital download): $9.95

Learning More About Catholic Records

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